The Tower of Guidance is the final chapter of Radiant Dawn, split into five pieces and tasked with providing a coherent ending to a plot that has multiple stories to tell and mysteries it keeps clutched to its chest. It does a surprisingly good job at meeting that task, with each stage of the Tower being focused purely on a specific part of the story. The order in which everything is resolved follows a narrative structure that compounds on this satisfaction, and is worthy of further unpacking.
So what overarching themes are there in Tellius to talk about? What else is there woven between the depths of the pages? Let's start off, perhaps surprisingly, with Ike and Ashnard.
So what's Micaiah's deal, then? We have the Lord (...well, Lady/Priestess) of Radiant Dawn, the girl on the cover, and... yeah, she kinda just dropped off in the end, huh? Sure, she turned out to be the person who was supposed to take Sanaki's crown and ultimately turned it down to become Daein's Queen, but, uh... Where did she go in the ending?
So what's Naesala's deal, then? It's clear there's something going on behind the scenes, but how much of that coloured his actions, and how much of it is on Naesala's head? Well, we're going to have to look through Naesala's actions across both games to get a grip on that.
Here's a medium reference list for Radiant Dawn!
Although this is technically a look at Part 4, it's not really correct to look at Part 4 on its own- it's largely a wrap up of the entire setting of Tellius, looking at the plot developments of both games and breaking down what was going on there, and who it benefitted.
So what's Part 4 really doing? The main six chapters are largely just spinning wheels plot wise- throwing Disciples of Order and Senate characters the game knows you want the catharsis of killing but which the game doesn't want to dump all in one part of the Endgame (although that would be an interesting take on the Senate fight). Perhaps having Valtome, Numida and Oliver fight separately is to keep the excitement of the battles up, because otherwise the story is largely exposition.
Endgame ramps up the dramatic nature of the reveals, but the plot itself is still largely just seeing these reveals and learning how things unravelled. This isn't necessarily a bad thing- if we didn't find out how things were set up, we'd be arguing about what did happen rather than why it happened that way. This feels like a key difference between Tellius and Fodlan, in a way- Fodlan tells a great deal of its story as window dressing to a much more active plot, which can allow some of the details to escape notice without the assistance of a fine-toothed comb.
Another key comparison to Fodlan is in its approach to politics. Tellius has the same opinions about the qualities of a good ruler as Fodlan does, and it's clear that the game expects you to understand people like Sanaki, Elincia, Edelgard and Marianne are good rulers. However, Fodlan is much more hands-on in exploring how to get this to work within its setting, offering endings that explore how the Middle Ages turned into the Renaissance, and from there offering windows into later settings. Tellius largely ignores these finer details, preferring instead to show "good rulers did good things and settled the continent into a peaceful era". This is very much in line with Fire Emblem tradition, which is something Fodlan is more interested in escaping, but it's clear that the developers had ideas way back here that weren't quite explored at the time that got a new lease in a later game.
As for how the ending of Tellius runs mechanically? Part 4 is a lot like Part 3, but with enemies in line with your demands, this is where you focus more heavily on how you hit the later levels for capping, rather than just the fact that you're well and truly outclassing the enemy and happen to be capping incidental to the process. The lack of plot leading to a lack of interesting objectives gets some people, but I find my own somehow. The Endgame itself is unleashing all your finely honed warriors on an unsuspecting cast of Disciples, before bunkering down and matching the powerful dragons and Ashera's onslaught. Again, on Normal. With Yune's help, things go a lot more smoothly, and sometimes I feel like the "Easy" difficulty moniker is applying in earnest.
Radiant Dawn's credits work basically the same as PoR's, but the killcounts are more interesting because of the shifting perspectives. I have been just as vigilant about my Radiant Dawn records as my PoR runs, so we can do the same thing. Just doing the one run, though.
Yes, the cutscene viewer denotes this a separate cutscene. It's even called Life Returns, which Path of Radiance had already used. That makes three of Radiant Dawn's eight cutscenes occuring once you completed the gameplay (as soon as you order Ike to attack Ashera and the RNG says you hit, you're done "playing" the game).
(Also, technically, according to the game, this should be end of the last update, but I think it's better if I put it here.)
Yune restores everyone who was turned into statues as she flies over the continent.
The first thing this laguz does on getting unpetrified is to untransform.
And start stretching. These guys were aware while petrified. He spent a good solid few weeks stuck transformed.
The Daein soldier prepares himself to kill the laguz, but doesn't seem entirely on board with the idea.
You can cut the tension with a knife.
But the laguz tells him, without a single word, "we've just spent weeks turned to stone, you want to spend our first day back fighting?"
And the weapons fall to the ground.
That's a catastrophe averted.
So, uh... here we are. Doing a backup run after all. Normal Mode Ashera kinda deserves it. So then, let's take a look at what badasses I brought with me from both genders.
I'm not warning you about anything this time, I just don't want the preview to show spoilers.
Today, we're going to be having a deep dive into genocide. Strap yourselves in, and if you've got experience with being in the midst of so much murder you'd rather not relive, there's a part you might want to skip.
A man who has lived a thousand years bows to the next generation. All in all, Deghinsea doesn't seem like all that bad a fellow, but his actions have well and truly carved a dark path for his people to follow. But first, of course, his boss conversations:
We have to fight roughly double our army's size in dragons. Remember those guys from 4-5? Now there are all of them.
Oh, by the way, while I'm looking around, these tiles that lead apparently to the endless abyss of "below the tower"? Those are Hades tiles. Mechanically, they're uninteresting, but that's a choice of word.
Here's the King of Dragons himself, not standing on any exciting terrain (thank Yune), but with more than enough ways to mess us up. 75 Atk, hitting Defence, means even our bulkiest unit is taking about 35 damage a hit- well, 30 with the Blessing, small comfort. 242 Hit, which means we're probably not avoiding it (imagine if he actually did hit his Skill cap!). And those Defences... Again, good thing he's not on terrain and not interested in finding some.
Now that's a class description that also tells us a bit about the man.
Here are his Skills. Shove, Formshift and Night Tide are of little interest to us, but Mantle and Ire are new.
Mantle nullifies all damage unless it's coming from one of Yune's Blessed weapons. Without that Blessing, we'd be defenceless against this guy. Imbue-for-Luck means Deghinsea heals 30 HP a turn- we've got to outdamage that if we want to overturn his 100 HP. Not mentioned: This thing is also Nihil and Fortune.
Ire is just a crit. The dragons got off bad in Masteries. But it is something we very much do not want to be hit by.
Deghinsea is also a five star commander. Good thing Ike's in command, or else we just lost 25 Hit/Avoid across the board. We're still down 10.
Nasir and Gareth are standing behind Deghinsea, transformed. It is outright in our interest to not attack them. This also leaves us with fewer options for dealing with the man himself.
Oh, not all dragons have the Tide Skills. All the better for us, in all honesty.
Yune decides to exposit because she's bored. Because expositions are how you entertain people!
"Well, except you, Kurth, your dad is pretty old."
And so the Black Knight has at last been vanquished. He lived an obstacle for Ike to face and died a tragedy of lost souls. Unfortunately, his choice to duel Ike and Ike alone means we won't have much to discuss from him, but Levail has some lines to sit through.
I dunno, Ike, something about the "no branching paths" is telling me yes.
Although saying that, we actually see them go down stairs in transitional shots. The Tower is weird.
Ike's wondering how this whole tower fits inside what they saw from the outside.
...Good thing I'm taking pictures!
The Begnion Senate has struggled and squirmed its way out of enough loopholes. The bastards must pay for their crimes. And it turns out there's a lot one can glean from them in their final lines.
It's almost like you can hear the goddess, if you listen hard enough. Although I will say this tower looks a lot bigger from the inside.
Especially since we have to climb all of it. Well, the characters do. We, the player, only need to worry about four floors. I don't know how many floors the tower has, and presumably it's folly to pretend counting them has purpose.
Four of Tellius's greatest threats gathered under one holy roof.
Everyone is here in Sienne at last!
So much for that story. "All myths are true" means everything comes to life, not that everything does what it says in the myth.
That's an interesting thing to teach a child. You've got your ABCs, the fact fire is hot, and the fact no one is allowed in that tower.
I find it interesting that they use a hitherto-unseen colour for Ashera's tower in this final map scene.
That's a map title that has one major purpose. But Endgame is going to be a lot more than a single word.
